On 9 October 2026 a High Court judge ordered the Ministry of Defence to pay the claimants’ costs on the indemnity basis after the department repeatedly missed court deadlines in a set of test cases on the relocation of Afghans to the United Kingdom. Mr Justice Chamberlain described the department’s conduct as showing “an apparently total lack of planning or organisation” and one application as “a textbook example of bad litigation practice.” A hearing fixed for 13 October was adjourned.
The ruling is R (FRY and others) v Secretary of State for Defence, [2026] EWHC 2571 (Admin). It decides nothing about whether the department’s Afghan relocation policy is lawful. It decides something narrower, and in some ways more basic: that a government department is bound by the same procedural discipline as every other litigant, and that a court will say so with costs consequences when it is not. For a publication that holds government to its own rules, that is worth recording carefully.
What the Court Decided, and What It Did Not
The judgment follows a case management hearing on 2 October and was handed down on 9 October, according to the published text. The underlying claims, described at paragraph 7, challenge decisions of the Secretary of State for Defence on relocating Afghan nationals to the UK. They include the decision announced on 28 April 2026 to end in-country assistance, the approach to support in third countries (including a decision concerning Tajikistan), and a decision affecting additional family members. The judgment notes that the cases are likely to matter to others in similar positions.
None of that is decided in this judgment. Its subject is the Ministry’s handling of the litigation itself. The judge set out a sequence that begins in the summer:
- On 6 August 2026 a judge directed disclosure by 14 August and the Defendant’s skeleton argument, amended grounds and open disclosure by 25 September (paras 10–13).
- The Defendant missed the 14 August disclosure deadline and raised the problem only afterwards (paras 14–15).
- On 18 September a further order set dates of 21 and 25 September for responses to information and disclosure requests. The Defendant missed 21 September and sought an extension after it had expired, then missed 25 September and 29 September (paras 22–24).
- On 29 September, after 4pm, it applied to extend the deadline to 5 October (para 24). The judge listed a hearing for 2 October.
The judge’s criticisms, as the judgment records them, were specific. The Defendant gave no notice that it could not comply until after the deadline had passed. Its extension applications, other than one in August, gave “wholly unspecific” reasons and were unsupported by witness statements. There was “no evidence that they had any regard for the effect that their delay would have on the other parties.” And the judge said it was “difficult to avoid the impression” that the Defendant “came to regard procedural directions as optional” (para 34).
Counsel for the Defendant argued that the legal team had worked hard with limited resources. The judge gave that “very little weight” because there was “almost no evidence to support it” (para 28).
The Order
The costs order is detailed. The Defendant must pay, on the indemnity basis, the costs occasioned by its extension applications since 6 August, including the 29 September application, the costs of the hearings on 2 and 9 October, and the costs attributable to the adjournment of the hearing fixed for 13 October (para 37(d)). Separately, it may not recover the costs of preparing documents filed in breach of the earlier order, because “the breach is not properly explained and follows a series of similar unexplained breaches” (paras 37(e) and 38).
The judge also changed how the Defendant may ask for time in future. Any contested application to vary directions must be supported by a witness statement from the responsible lawyer setting out the steps taken and when, must name the decision-maker, and must confirm that person has read the judgment. Such applications go to the Judge in Charge of the Administrative Court and may require cross-examination (para 37(b)–(c)). A copy of the judgment was directed to be sent to the Treasury Solicitor (para 46).
Two caveats on the record. The judgment is not consistent about the hearing date, giving 12 October at paragraph 9 and 13 October at paragraphs 25 and 33. And it does not state a new hearing date; it says the case will be relisted in Michaelmas Term 2026.
Why It Matters Beyond the Courtroom
The Ministry’s position in these cases sits alongside a policy built on deadlines. In a written statement of 28 April 2026, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, announced that the department would end in-country assistance for Afghans leaving Afghanistan, enforce the Immigration Rules requirement to attend a visa application centre within 12 months except in exceptional circumstances, and treat December 2028 as a backstop that “will therefore mark the end of relocations to the UK.” The statement says fewer than 9,000 eligible people are estimated still to need relocating and that the department aims to decide the current caseload by spring 2027. Free Movement’s account notes that the 12-month window may be difficult to meet for people who must reach visa centres in Iran or Pakistan.
A government is entitled to set firm deadlines for the people it deals with, and conservatives have long argued that it should. The principle works only if it runs in both directions. A department that expects applicants to meet a fixed date, with exceptions for the exceptional, has little standing to treat its own court-ordered dates as negotiable after the event. The judge made a similar point in general terms, writing that opposed extension applications strain the court’s limited resources to the detriment of other litigants (para 35). That is a cost with a taxpayer dimension: the court’s time, and the time of the lawyers on both sides, is consumed by a dispute over procedure that preceded any ruling on substance.
This is not an isolated pattern in RSN’s recent reporting. In our analysis of the High Court’s finding on family detention, a Home Office defence relied on accommodation that had been closed since 2020. In our report on the torture-survivor accommodation ruling, a policy was changed without the consultation a court later held was required. And in our look at the asylum appeals backlog, a falling queue at one stage of the system coincided with a rising one at the next. Those cases involve the Home Office; this one involves the Ministry of Defence. The common feature is a state that is hard to hold to its own procedures.
Colin Yeo, writing on Free Movement, makes the comparison explicit. He notes that the case involves the Ministry of Defence rather than the Home Office, but that its legal teams will be familiar to immigration practitioners, and argues that claimant lawyers in immigration cases often face strict scrutiny while the opposing side faces little consequence. That is a practitioner’s commentary, not a finding of the court, and is offered here as context.
The Government’s Side
Fairness requires noting what the judgment does not establish, and what the department might say. The caseload is large, as the 28 April statement itself shows, with outstanding applications reported to have fallen from about 25,000 in July 2025 to fewer than 17,000. Government lawyers in a multi-claimant test case in which special advocates are instructed work under real constraints. Counsel said as much. The judge was not persuaded on the evidence before him; he did not find that such constraints were absent, only that the department had not shown them.
The costs order is also a sanction on conduct, not a finding on the policy, and the judge acknowledged that the practical recovery of costs may be limited where claimants are legally aided (para 38). The Ministry has not, in the sources reviewed for this article, published a response to the judgment. RSN has not been able to confirm whether it intends to appeal the costs order or how it will meet the new evidential requirements.
Implications
Three points follow. First, the court has now put in writing a standard that government departments can be held to: “Generic reasons are unlikely to be sufficient” to justify an extension (para 44). Second, the requirement that a named decision-maker confirm they have read the judgment is unusual, and it ties a departmental failure to an identifiable officer. Third, the real test is whether the department’s compliance improves when the hearing is relisted. Costs orders change behaviour only if someone is accountable for the budget they come from.
The accountability question for Parliament and the department’s own oversight is a simple one. How many court deadlines has the Ministry missed in this litigation, who decided to seek each extension, and what resources were assigned to a set of cases that the department’s own statement treats as central to concluding the programme? The answers should be a matter of public record, and the judge directed that a copy of the judgment go to the Treasury Solicitor.
Sources
Judgment, [2026] EWHC 2571 (Admin), National Archives; BAILII; Written Ministerial Statement HCWS1547, 28 April 2026, UK Parliament; Free Movement, 12 October 2026; Free Movement, Changes and ending support for the Afghan Resettlement Programme.